


If You Hold My Hair Back [I Will Hold Your Hair Back]

by Andian



Category: Russian Doll (TV 2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use (mentioned), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 05:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: It gets worse. And then slightly better. And then worse again. Nadia figures that’s what dying a bunch of times and then working through the entire shit the universe had so gracefully thrown at you in what was technically one single night and day can do to you.





	If You Hold My Hair Back [I Will Hold Your Hair Back]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seinmit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/gifts).

It gets worse. And then slightly better. And then worse again. Nadia figures that’s what dying a bunch of times and then working through the entire shit the universe had so gracefully thrown at you in what was technically one single night and day can do to you. 

She’d share that theory with Alan but his head is almost completely buried in his toilet as he empties the content of his stomach into it. She’d hold his hair back but it’s too short for that so she contents herself with patting his shoulder.

“Wow, that’s a lot. Didn’t know you could fit that much alcohol inside you,” she says. Alan says nothing, only slumps exhausted against the toilet seat.

Nadia doesn’t actually expect him to answer. He never says much of anything when he gets like this. When he has a “bad night”, as he sometimes calls it. He had more bad nights than good ones lately. Nadia herself keeps to having bad days. Day drinking is so much more fun than drinking at night after all. 

Alan is shaking slightly now though and that’s her cue to help him stand up.

“Come on, let’s get you into some other clothes,” she mumbles. Pyjamas preferably because pyjamas are for sleeping and Alan waking up in his street clothes in bed would just upset him even more. Nadia does not want to upset Alan even more. There was no need to turn his bad nights also into bad days.

“’m sorry,” Alan mumbles. His stinks of beer and there is icing on his nose. It’s always with the cake with him, Nadia thinks.

“Knew you had this … this thing with Maxine tonight” Alan continues. Nadia almost feels touched that he remembers with whom she was planning to get high tonight.

“Na, it’s fine, Maxine ditched me for some weird pirate radio thing. I think they are going to broadcast arias or something?”

There is no reaction from Alan, only him slightly swaying on his feet and Nadia gently pulls him towards his bedroom.

“You know, I thought we could maybe go and see Ruth tomorrow, you know. Just have a little talk and-“

“No therapy.”

Nadia shrugs. 

“No therapy, okay.“ 

Alan says nothing and really, who is Nadia to push him on this? Alan has bad nights but Nadia’s days are worse. She is 36 now and sometimes she still dreams of broken mirrors. 

She flops down on Alan’s bed and pulls him down with her, suddenly in no mood to help him change his clothes. She’d just had to make sure she’d be there in the morning to calm him down. He had been there for her often enough.

Alan fits easily against her and she pulls him closer, feeling his shaky breath slowly start to calm as they both lie there curled up together.

She can’t think too closely about how it also calms herself down. Sometimes she wonders if it would have been easier without all of this. Without having met Alan. Her past has always been with her, ready to tear her up from the inside, but now she sometimes just feels empty.

“A hole,” she mumbles almost to herself. “A hole where something should be. How the fuck am I supposed to fill it?”

“Cake,” Alan mumbles. “Cake’s good.”

She snorts. 

“You promise I’ll be happy if I have cake?”

“No. But I promise you won’t be alone while eating it.”

And tonight is a bad night for Alan. And tomorrow might be too. And the day after could be better and then even better again and then maybe it would be Nadia who would have a bad day and a bad night and it would be Alan holding up her hair as she rambled on about all the drugs she had just taken and the emptiness where mirror shards used to be.

But right now they are here and the world is too overwhelming to deal with just tonight. 

“Okay,” Nadia says. “Okay.”

It would be unfair of the universe after all to expect them to figure out the entire shit it was throwing at them in one night.

**Author's Note:**

> The song this work was inspired by is called "Hold your hair back" by Jacob Golden.


End file.
